Gun Violence Lowers Academic Achievement Especially for Black Children

In early September, the United States experienced its 24^th school shooting of the year. Since that incident at Apalachee High School in Georgia, there have been several additional school shootings. Gun violence in schools has increased in recent years (Figure 1), but sadly that is only a small slice of the gun violence that children experience. Because of gun-extremist politicians and a gun-extremist Supreme Court, more people — including criminals — have easy access to guns, and they are allowed to have guns in more places than ever before. As a result, school safety and the well-being of our children suffer.

While death and injury are the most immediate and severe consequences of gun violence, there are many other negative collateral consequences. One that scholars are coming to more fully appreciate is gun violence’s effect on academic achievement. In the Annual Review of Criminology, Patrick Sharkey summarizes the findings of a seminal study of children who were targets of a sniper attack on their school playground:

From one month to 14 months after the shootings, children who were on the playground when the attack took place exhibited more extensive symptoms of PTSD than children who were inside the school. For children inside the school when the attack occurred, symptoms of PTSD faded in the 14 months following the incident. For those on the playground, symptoms persisted over time. A majority of those on the playground continued to report fear of a recurrence, sleep disturbance, and jumpiness more than a year after the attack.

It is not difficult to imagine that the trauma of a school shooting can disrupt children’s ability to focus on schoolwork. A growing body of scholarship shows students’ academic achievement declines after school shootings. Marika Cabral and her colleagues use individual- and school-level data to study the effect of school shootings. They state:

Our results indicate that exposure to a shooting at school disrupts human capital accumulation in the near-term through increased absences, chronic absenteeism, and grade retention; harms educational outcomes in the medium-term through reductions in high school graduation, college attendance, and college graduation; and adversely impacts long-term labor market outcomes through reductions in employment and earnings at ages 24–26.

In short, school shootings are quite economically harmful to the children exposed to them.

But schools are not the only place where children are exposed to gun violence. It can occur anywhere in their neighborhood. Figures 2 and 3 illustrate the simple correlation between exposure to violence — including gun violence — and academic achievement. Children exposed to more violent crime in a school district tend to have lower standardized test scores in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics. Gerard Torrats-Espinosa’s more detailed analysis of these data found a statistically significant causal relationship between homicides (most homicides are committed with firearms) and boys’ academic achievement. Boys exposed to more homicides had lower scores on ELA and mathematics achievement tests.

Torrats-Espinosa also found a negative relationship with ELA test scores for Black and Hispanic students. His study is likely limited by the fact that it uses data at the school-district level. The crudeness of the data probably hides additional negative effects of gun violence in mathematics and for different sub-populations.

Figure 2

Violent Crime is Associated with Lower English Language Arts (ELA) Test Scores

Source: Gerard Torrats-Espinosa, “Crime and Inequality in Academic Achievement Across School Districts in the United States,” Demography 57(1, February 2020): 123–145. Used with permission of Torrats-Espinosa.

Figure 3

Violent Crime is Associated with Lower Math Test Scores

Source: Gerard Torrats-Espinosa, “Crime and Inequality in Academic Achievement Across School Districts in the United States,” Demography 57(1, February 2020): 123–145. Used with permission of Torrats-Espinosa.

Earlier this year, the Washington Post profiled Rashad Bates, a Black 14-year-old boy who has already lost five friends to gun violence. For a Black male, his situation is not so unusual. Gun violence occurs more in sociallyand economically disadvantaged communities. Black children are exposed to gun violence at a much greater rate than children of other races (Figure 4), which means that the negative academic impact of gun violence is felt most strongly in poor, Black communities.

There are several gun safety policies that would keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals and away from sensitive places, but gun-extremist politicians and a gun-extremist Supreme Court block the implementation of these policies. There are also effective community-based violence interruption programsas well as other initiatives that move at-risk individuals away from violence and toward productive employment – but these programs are not adequately funded. Ultimately, the problem of gun violence is a problem of political will. Broadly speaking, the public is overwhelmingly supportive of gun safety measures. Thus far, that has not been enough to convince political leaders and Supreme Court justices to enact policies that would lead to a substantial reduction in gun violence.

This first appeared on CEPR.

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